Blue
by Nephthys Moon
Summary: The color of the eyes that first drew her in. The color of the box she called home. The color of the sky and oceans on her native planet. The color of the envelope in her hand. For Puxa10 in the dwsecretsanta on tumblr.
1. Invasion of the Shop Window Dummies

A long time ago, in the future, Rose Tyler had been called the Defender of Earth. She'd travelled through space and time, crossed dimensions, and had once held the Universe in her head.

And then, she woke up to find it had all been a dream. She was ten years old, living on the Powell Estates with her mother, in 1996, not twenty-seven, in 2013, living in a parallel world, working for the very organisation that had created the breach that led to her quasi-imprisonment.

And the world was - wrong. There was no other way to describe it. Her first Doctor had taken her hand, and she had felt the whirl of the Earth beneath her feet as it rotated on its axis, the absolute indescribable speed of it as it hurled through space along its orbit - a feeling that had vanished the moment he'd dropped her hand, leaving her breathless and dizzy - a feeling that had returned, to a lesser extent, like a soft, reassuring hum at the back of her mind, once her first Doctor had become her second Doctor. And that feeling wasn't gone, exactly - but it was - wrong. Sour. Like instead of a beautiful golden glow it had turned a dull yellow with sickly green notes.

She didn't know why she was thinking in colours, either. It was also quite possible, of course, that she was going mad. What normal ten year old dreamed those kinds of dreams? A mad man who could change his face had taken her away in a blue box that was bigger on the inside and could travel through time and space!

Rose was pretty sure it was all just a bit of insanity brought on by too much of Mum's shepard pie. But still - still...there were things she couldn't explain, things that she knew before they happened - people she knew, before she met them. Like Jimmy Stone. He didn't move to the Powell Estate until she was twelve - his family had money, once, and it had taken a few years for them to fall to hard enough times for them to need to live in such low circumstances. They'd never approved of his life, or her. She'd fancied herself in love with Jimmy Stone since she was fourteen, in her dreams, and she could see the exact same things beginning to play out in her reality, even though she'd done what she could to change herself from the girl she'd seen in her dreams.

She'd give dream!Rose that much credit, at least. There were some things about the girl that she never, ever wanted to feel, and that was that crushing sense of never, ever being good enough. She knew she was clever - even her teachers at school told her so, even if they usually followed it up with something about how it was a shame she'd never amount to anything. And while the Rose in her dreams had always believed them, little Rose Tyler had Dream Rose as a sort of guide, showing her that even without their belief, she could be something amazing. She forced herself to study the stars, just in case that daft old man with the big ears and the leather jacket with the mad blue box was real. She wanted to be able to name as many of those twinkling lights as he could.

Despite the things that proved her dream could have its basis in reality, there were other things that seemed to point towards it being nothing more than a really elaborate ruse her mind had created to trick her. She convinced Mickey to let her use his computer, and to teach her what he knew about hacking. Mickey was the only one she could trust not to have her sanctioned for the things in her head.

Together, they researched everything they could about classified government agencies. There was no mention, anywhere, of an agency named Torchwood. In fact, the only record of anything named Torchwood, at all, was a tiny footnote in history referencing the house Rose remembered staying at with her imaginary Doctor. The story of the werewolf had been reduced to a legend, and though it was "speculated" by conspiracy theorists that Queen Victoria had been attacked during her stay at the manor house the night its lord had died, there was no mention of a Sir Doctor nor a Dame Rose having been involved.

She tried to find proof of Torchwood - she went to Canary Wharf, and with forged credentials, thanks to her work at a print shop, she was given a journalist's tour of the building, including the very top floor. No white wall. No levers of doom. Nothing to make her heart clench in screaming agony. She didn't know which was worse - the anticipation that she would find those things, or the fact that they didn't exist.

Discouraged, she tried to find Jack Harkness, but there was no sign of him in Cardiff. She "remembered" him saying his Torchwood was based somewhere near the Rift, where they'd landed when they'd visited before, but though she wandered around for hours, asking anyone and everyone she met if a tall, handsome man named Jack had hit on them, no one had given her a positive response that had panned out.

She'd slunk home to London with her tail between her legs to lick her wounds in private, ignoring Mickey's calls for three days before settling down to study for her A-Levels. She watched the news, looking for anything that could lead her to the mystery man called the Doctor, for anything that would prove that her dreams were not just weird flashes of the future laced with liberal fantasy, but nothing happened.

When her gap year came, instead of taking the time to see the world, she took a job in a shop, the same one she remembered Dream Rose working in, on the hope that she'd finally meet him.

The bag shaking in front of her face, how was it different from any other night? Going down to Wilson's office - how did she know?

Rose was on tenterhooks. This was it - this was the night. There was the noise, the clatter that drew her attention from Wilson's office and towards the supply room where she'd finally meet him - memory and reality were becoming one in a way that had never happened before. She followed the footsteps of Dream Rose as though she were in a dream, outside her body, not in control, and she knew that there was a certain inevitability to this moment - predestination, Shareen would call it. Shareen had always liked to read, use big words she found in books. Rose used to make fun of her for that, when they were little - before the dream.

There they were - the shop window dummies - the Nestene Duplicates, he'd called them. Her memories from Torchwood One in Pete's World started pouring in as they began backing her against the wall. Autons, controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, seeking refuge on Earth, primary weapons were a laser or photon pistol device concealed in the hand, capable of creating an almost identical duplicate of any human, alive or body, honed from years of conditioning and self-taught martial arts from her "memories", as well as instincts that had been ingrained from that other life, was tense and poised for flight when a warm, solid hand grasped hers.

She felt it then, just as strongly as she had before, but still as wrong - the turn of the Earth, the absolute speed of the planet's orbit, but so very, very wrong - the golden note turned sour yellow.

And a voice, a voice in her ear. "Run," he said, pulling her arm along with hers, and she didn't even hesitate, never looked up. The voice was familiar, so she followed without questioning, despite the wrongness. And as soon as they reached the familiar elevator, she turned to look, to finally see those ears, that leather jacket, but she was pulled into warm arms and a thick, woollen coat that smelled of musk and bay rum and something she recognised but couldn't place - and then there was a flash of white light and the smell of the Thames assaulted her nose and she was being lifted from her feet in an encompassing hug that swung her legs around her saviour's body and smothered into a warm, broad chest.

"Hello," he said into her hair, and she laughed, finally able to place the voice.

"Hello," she answered, grinning up at him as he put her down. The eyes were blue, of course, bright and shining with laughter, not distant and raging with a storm. The hair was brown, naturally, and perfectly styled, never close-cropped, emphasising over-large ears.

"I think I'm supposed to say 'hello' a few more times," he teased, and she swatted his shoulder playfully.

"Don't you dare, Captain Jack Harkness," she said, shaking her head. "The fact that you actually exist, that you know who I am - that I'm not mad! Oi, you have no idea how brilliant this is!"

"So you've known since 1996, then?" he asked, looking down at her. "Oh, Rosie, I should have checked on you sooner. I was so afraid I'd be disrupting the time lines if I met you before you were supposed to start travelling with him."

"You might have done," she said, shrugging. "You can tell me all about it later. We've got an angry Consciousness to deal with, remember? Invasion of the Shop Window Dummies, yeah?"

"Anti-Plastic's in my pocket," Jack said. "I know the Doctor always gives them a chance, but I remember what you told me," he trailed off.

"The Consciousness wouldn't have stopped," she said, her voice hard. "They almost killed my mum, and they would have killed the Doctor. We don't give it a choice."

She knew the Doctor would never approve of what they were about to do, but she and Jack didn't answer to him, and he wasn't there. Jack used his Vortex Manipulator to pop them into the Consciousness' "lair" and with something resembling an unholy glee, Jack tipped in the vial of Anti-Plastic before it had a chance to register their presence. They popped back out a moment later. No muss, no fuss, no Invasion of the Shop Window Dummies. She still had a job, no one had died (except the Consciousness), and Mickey had never been taken. The Doctor might not approve, but she thought she might like their way better - there was less damage.

Jack tossed her a phone. "Call Mickey, call Jackie. Tell Mickey you've found some proof - I know you'd have told Mickey Mouse as much as you could; he'll cover for you with Jackie. Tell Jackie you're touring a uni campus, last minute opening, and you're taking Mickey - yes, he's invited, too, but he'll have to find his own way to get there. Taking two makes it worse, taking three is - distinctly unpleasant," he said. Rose nodded.

Jack pulled out another phone, and while Rose made the phone calls he suggested, telling her mother the lies Jack had prepared, she tried to listen to his conversation.

"When are you?" he was asking the other person. "I don't give a damn if you can't tell me, get your ass to the coordinates I'm sending you, because I need your help with a situation, Doctor Song!"

Rose's heart clenched at the word Doctor - for a moment she'd thought he was on the phone with the Doctor, but clearly he hadn't been. She happily convinced her mother she was touring another uni, and since her mother was convinced she had gotten airs and graces from her scholarships and working in high-class shops during school breaks, she didn't want to hear which uni it was anyway. Mickey was only too happy to finally see something of the life that Rose had been dreaming about most of their lives. She got the address from Jack and Mickey looked up the trains and buses he'd need and Jack promised to send a car to the train station for him. Their calls finished, Rose and Jack stood awkwardly looking over at the London Eye.

"The Consciousness was using it as a transmitter, y'know," she said, gesturing at the massive structure awkwardly.

"Aliens have no subtlety," he said with a snort. "Of course, they have slightly more than the people I'm taking you to visit."

"Torchwood really doesn't exist then," she said, trying to wrap her mind around the idea that the organisation that was behind so much of her misery, that had manipulated her life for so long simply did not exist.

"As far as we can tell, they never have, and while it is possible that they will in a few years, right now, they don't," he said. "I'm not the expert on this, Rosie. I don't have all the answers. But if you'll come with me, I'll get you all the answers I can."

"Doctor Song?" she asked, raising one eyebrow in a fair imitation of her second Doctor. Jack merely nodded, not even feigning surprise that she'd listened to his conversation. "Well, then - allons-y!" she said with false cheer.

Jack punched a few buttons on his wrist and put her hand over his, flashing them from their place in front of the London Eye to an oddly chaotic yet organised office. A handsome, well-dressed man looked up from a desk in the corner and smirked at Jack. "How many times have I told you to stop bringing home pretty girls, Jack?" he said, rolling his eyes.

"That's enough lip out of you, Ianto," Jack said, winking at the pretty boy, who shook his head and turned back to his paperwork.

"Welcome to UNIT, Miss Tyler," he said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. "If you'd care for tea, please let me know. Jack, Doctor Song was here for a few minutes before she mentioned something about - and I quote - 'bloody Time Agents learning their bloody coordinates' and said she'd be back in half an hour."

Rose was impressed that he'd managed the whole thing with an entirely straight face, his voice completely devoid of emotion. She'd have at least smirked when delivering a message like that.

"Yes, thank you, Ianto," Jack said. "Please remind me why I keep you on, again?"

"No one else will put up with your flirting, sir," the man said without looking up. "Gwen would probably shoot you, Tosh would stare at you like you'd sprouted tentacles, Owen would attempt to punch you, and Miss Tyler would likely laugh, if half of what you've told me about her is true."

Jack huffed and rubbed his temples. "Ianto, be a good little secretary and - I don't know - go file something, fetch a coffee - just - get out," he said, clearly done with his assistant.

"Tea, Miss Tyler?" Ianto asked, standing and looking completely undisturbed by Jack's antics, while Rose attempted to stifle her laughter. She'd never seen unflappable Jack so flustered. She would need to remember Ianto's technique.

"Tea would be lovely, ta," she said. "And it's Rose, please."

"Of course, Miss Tyler," Ianto said, leaving the room. "I'll return with your tea, and coffee for you, Captain, in a few moments. I will then attempt to find something to file. Send for me if you need anything further." The door closed behind him.

"Jack Harkness, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were just a little in love with that boy," she said, letting loose the laughter that had been fighting its way free since the exchange had started.

"Don't - just don't, Rose, please," Jack said, and for the first time, Rose realised that Jack was actually in pain.

"What's wrong?" she asked, stepping closer to him, rubbing his shoulder in comfort.

"What's wrong is that he knows what's going to happen to the charming and handsome Ianto Jones, and he can't reconcile himself to the idea that everything has its time, and everything dies," said a woman, and Rose looked up to see that they were no longer alone.


	2. Professor River Song

**Chapter 2.**

**Professor River Song, Archaeology**

Behind Ianto's desk sat what was perhaps the most stunning woman Rose had ever seen, including the French courtesan the Doctor had been so taken with on that space ship a long time ago, in the future. Tall, with riotous curls that framed a strong, mature face whose lines had fallen in kind places, the woman had eyes that seemed to pierce through her with knowledge far beyond the years her face held. _Eyes like the Doctor's_.

"You've regenerated," she said, stepping towards the woman to get a closer look, never for a moment having imagined that he could do something like this.

"Oh, sweetie," the woman said, her laughter kind. "Your thoughts are written plainly across your face, but I'm afraid you've gotten it quite, quite wrong. If that man ever regenerated into a woman, I think he might call it quits right then and there."

Rose knew she must look surprised - she certainly felt it, and the woman's laughter was confirmation. "I'm sorry," she said. "But - your eyes…"

"Yours, too," the bushy-haired woman said, gesturing towards Rose's own face. "Though neither of us has quite the same weight in ours that he does, we both carry a part of the burden that he does. Look carefully at the Captain. His are the same. Impossible things, the three of us, especially right now. What you see in my eyes, and what I see in yours, sweetie, is knowledge, power, and the weight of centuries."

"Who _are _you?" Rose asked, her eyes wide as she stared at this woman who claimed that they and Jack were the same.

"River Song, Professor of Archaeology at Luna University," she said, standing. "And you, my dear, are Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf. And once upon a time, he was Captain Jack Harkness of the Time Agency, known as the Face of Boe on recruitment posters."

Rose turned to look at Jack. Jack who couldn't die, who would live forever, who would - her head felt fuzzy. "The Face of Boe?" she asked, shaking her head a bit to clear it.

"Oh, yes," River Song said, amusement making those old eyes light up. "His pretty boy face was plastered on recruitment posters for the Time Agency all over the Boeshane Peninsula."

"And they called him - the Face of Boe," Rose repeated, looking from Jack to River and back again, trying to equate the handsome man with the age-old eyes standing next to her with the giant head in a jar from Platform One and the sun expanding - which, given River's unholy amusement, was exactly the connection she was supposed to be making, without Jack catching on, because of course Jack couldn't find out he turned into a giant, telepathic head. That wouldn't do at all. "I need to sit down," she said finally, dropping into a visitor's chair in front of Ianto's desk.

Ianto returned, thankfully, with a perfect cup of steaming tea, better than her mother's even, a cup of coffee for Jack, and something that may have been water for River, before excusing himself again. Once he was gone, River settled herself behind his desk again, and Jack sat next to Rose in the other visitor's chair.

"Sweetie, I'm sure you must have thousands of questions," she said, "and I'll answer as many of them as I can, but there are some things I simply can't answer. Some of them I don't know the answers to, because time is in a state of flux right now, more than you can imagine, or some because to know too much about your own future is dangerous. If I were to tell you that you survived a certain event - say, I told you that you lived through tonight, and you were mugged on your way home, you would be careless with your life during that event, confident in the knowledge that this is not the night you were slated to die, and one tiny little slip, and you could die anyway, unwriting a fixed point in time, and disrupting the entire causal nexus. With time as unstable as it is at the moment, we cannot afford for anything to go wrong."

"I understand," Rose said. "There was - when the stars were going out, and I had to find Donna, I couldn't tell her anything. If I told her anything, even my name, there was the possibility that everything could unwind, and we would all die."

"Yes, it's quite a bit like that, actually," River said, nodding, "only bigger, Rose, so very much bigger. With Donna, you were working with a matter of months. That man," River shook her head in clear frustration and took a few deep, steadying breaths. "That ridiculous, impossible man has done something incredibly stupid. Jack knows the very bare basics, and I've promised him a much fuller story when the time was right, and tonight I get to make good on that promise."

River settled herself back into Ianto's desk chair, cradled her glass in her hands, and began her story.

"To fully explain this to you, I have to start - oh, a long time ago, I suppose. And don't worry, Jack, I disabled all listening devices in your office when I was here earlier." Jack looked startled at this, but River just shrugged. "We all know the Doctor was abnormal by Time Lord standards. The Time Lords had a very strict policy of observation when it came to lesser species - and to them, everyone was a lesser species. I think most Time Lords believed other Gallifreyans were lesser species. It's important to realise that every Time Lord was a Gallifreyan, but not every Gallifreyan was a Time Lord - they were caste above and beyond their own people. And the Doctor - well, he was something unique among his own people.

I'm an archaeologist, and I became one because I wanted to know more about him. Getting that man to talk about himself is like getting blood from a stone. He can talk for days and say nothing at all. So I read about him. There are theories, of course, about why he was different; there are even a few in Old High Gallifreyan. One suggests that he may have been born of Rassilon himself. I don't know, and I can't say. All that matters is where others observed, he wanted to interact, to live and breathe among other species - so he stole a TARDIS, and he ran away, taking his granddaughter, Susan, with him.

Rose, did you know that the closest translation for Susan's name in his native tongue is actually "Rose"?" River laughed.

"I'm not sure that means anything in particular, but I've always thought that it was sweet. His first companion after losing everything was something that reminded him of everything he'd lost. The last TARDIS of Gallifrey, and the last Time Lord, travelling together, both broken, patched together, and they find this tiny little human girl who is just as big on the inside as they are. They never, ever forgot you, Rose Tyler. The TARDIS could rearrange herself a hundred thousand times, purge every single room she has in existence, including the wardrobe, the library, and the Doctor's own bedroom, and your room would be locked in place."

Rose was crying. The TARDIS had claimed her, and she had never had a home she'd loved so much, nor that had loved her so much, apparently. Jack was holding her hand, rubbing comforting circles across the back of it.

"Jack, I think you've been briefed on most of what the Doctor did between the Game Station and the Medusa Cascade, yes?" River asked. He nodded. "Rose?"

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes, remembering that awful, awful day in Norway.

River took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for this Rose, but I have to ask. How long did you have?"

"Two years," she said, her closed eyes giving her some protection against the pitying stares she was sure she was getting. "We had two years before his mind began to burn, but he knew it was going to happen within the first hour. He put it together very quickly, and started yelling at himself for not thinking of it - for trapping me there with a broken, useless version of himself. That's when he offered," her voice broke, and she couldn't continue.

"He offered you the bond, so he could share his memories with you before he burned," River finished for her. She nodded gratefully. "I'm so sorry for you loss."

"Thank you," Rose whispered. This was one of the few memories she hadn't wanted to examine closely in the nine years since she'd had 'the dream'; it had hurt far too much. "What about Donna?"

"Donna didn't have the advantage of being grown from a Time Lord to begin with," River said. "Her brain was fully human; she barely lasted until they got back. He saved her by sealing away her memories. Everything she did, everything she was, everything she'd become - gone. That's one of the things we'll need to discuss, actually."

"You said you'd tell us what happened," Jack reminded her, and River nodded.

"Yes, well, after Donna, and Rose, he - Jack, do you remember how he said if a Time Lord did what Rose had done, he'd become a vengeful god?" At Jack's nod, she continued. "Well, he did anyway. He altered a fixed point. He tampered with things that should never have been tampered with, and caused a woman who ought to have died on a mission, who knew she ought to have died on that mission, to kill herself, because she had more respect for the timeline at that point than he did."

Rose stared at River, horrified. The Doctor wouldn't - he couldn't! Her big-eared, leather-wearing Doctor had nearly abandoned her in her own past for altering a fixed point in time! Surely he wouldn't - the look of absolute distaste on River's face assured her that he had.

"My god," she whispered. "There was no one to hold his hand."

"Sometimes he needs a hand to hold, Rose," River said, gently. "But more often than not, since Canary Wharf, what he's needed is someone to stop him from going too far. You've seen it yourself. You saw it in the school, that day with the Krillitanes, remember? Before that, you saw it in Utah, with the Dalek. The only thing that stops him from becoming the very monsters he fights is the people that believe in him."

"Who believes in him now?" Rose asked.

"That's just the thing," River said, shaking her head. "Right now, the only three people who remember the Doctor are sitting in this very room. And we only remember because we exist outside of time, and because we each have a special connection to the TARDIS, and because none of us age in a proper manner."

"I think it's about time you explained yourself, Professor," Jack said, and Rose couldn't remember ever hearing him sound so angry.

"Of course," River said. "After that, there wasn't much for him to do. He stopped the Master from unwittingly bringing back Gallifrey - not from the Time Lock, in its proper place, but by displacing Earth entirely."

"I think I missed that, thankfully," Jack said.

"This was after the 456," River said. Jack's face shuttered. "He was poisoned by radiation saving the life of Donna's grandfather, who had helped him during the entire thing. He regenerated." They both nodded at that. In some ways, it made it easier, in others, harder. A new Doctor wasn't _their _Doctor - he was just _the _Doctor. "It went a bit wrong."

Rose started laughing. "Doesn't it always?" she asked, thinking of his manic energy followed by his complete and total collapse after wishing her Mum and Mickey a happy Christmas.

"Worse than usual, actually," River said. "He'd waited too long, tried to say goodbye to everyone he could, and the energy release was so powerful he managed to completely destroy the interior of the console room in the TARDIS, causing her to crash into someone's shed."

"Bet that someone was in for a nasty shock," Jack muttered, stifling his laughter.

"Tell me about it," Rose agreed.

"If you've quite finished." River glared at them both, and they mumbled apologies at her while shooting each other amused glances out of the corners of their eyes. "That was in 1996: the _someone_ was seven-year-old Amelia Pond, who was praying for Santa to come fix the crack in her wall, through which she could hear a voice sometimes, saying that Prisoner Zero had escaped."

"Well, _fuck_," was Jack's eloquent reply.

"1996, you said?" Rose asked. "Around Easter?"

River nodded, smiling. "Yes, exactly - I'm getting there, but it will take a few minutes. I promise, you're on the right track, and it has everything to do with it."

"Continue, then," she said.

"Amelia was completely unperturbed by the mad man who was, as she put it, coughing up gold glitter, and tasting his way through every single thing she had in the house, which convinced him that whatever the crack in her wall was, it must have been terrifying," River said. "He, of course, investigated, and discovered it was something that ought not to ever exist: a crack in the skin of the Universe itself."

"What could possibly cause that!?" Jack demanded.

"More importantly, what was it doing on the wall of a seven-year-old girl, and who was Prisoner Zero?" Rose asked.

"Yes, well, before he could get all of those answers, the TARDIS was done fixing herself after he trashed her, so he popped off for 'five minutes' and when he got back, he discovered (after a little trial and error that involved a cricket bat and a pair of handcuffs) that he'd actually been gone for twelve years and that Prisoner Zero had been hiding in Amelia Pond's house the entire time." River was smirking. Rose was gaping. Jack looked ready to strangle the Doctor the moment they found him.

"Oh, relax, both of you. Amelia - or, Amy, as she prefers now - is fine. The Doctor sorted Prisoner Zero, he eventually managed to invite Amy to travel with him, and she and her fiancé have been travelling with the Doctor for some time now. The problem is those cracks. There wasn't just one on Amy's wall. There was one in every single place the TARDIS has ever landed. Everywhere. Every_when_. Stretching all across the entire Universe."

"The TARDIS is somehow responsible for these cracks, then?" Rose asked, puzzled.

"Yes - and no," River said. "To go back even further, before you, before me, before Jack - actually, Jack may be familiar with them - Jack, what do you know of the Church of the Papal Mainframe?"

"Are you asking about the actual Church or that weird sect that had that sprung up that - oh - _oh_, I see…" he dropped off into thought. "You're asking about the sect, aren't you?"

"I see you're _quite _familiar with the Papal Mainframe, then," River said. "Time is a funny thing. And time on that place is odder still. Can I say, with absolute certainty, that 1996, Earth, is before or after, the 900-year-siege of Christmas? Absolutely not. As of this moment, the sect known as the Silence may or may not be in existence - well, actually, they are not. But the Silence essentially declared war on the Doctor, Rose," she said. "And it was to stop Gallifrey from returning. I cannot say that I blame them. He likes to remember the best of his people, and likes to forget all the reasons why he stopped them. He doesn't like to remember that he stopped them from returning in 2009 not just because Gallifrey was going to destroy Earth when it returned but because Rassilon was going to initiate the Final Sanction and destroy all corporeal life forms, including the Time Lords, so that they could ascend to beings of pure thought. It's the primary reason, though not the only one, he initiated the Moment and destroyed his own people to begin with during the Time War. They had become so corrupt as to be unrecognisable."

"That's horrible!"

"He has been alone for so long, inside his own head, that he has forgotten the horrors, and all that mattered to him then was that he could bring them back," River said. "And so the Silence declared war on the Doctor. And one of the ways they waged this war was to destroy the TARDIS. An exploding TARDIS, and don't ask me how because the physics of a multi-dimensional being exploding are beyond my comprehension, creates a Total Event Collapse. Every star, in every galaxy, in every single Universe - even the parallels - is destroyed – across all of time. Completely wiped out of existence. But the Silence didn't know, or maybe didn't realise that would happen. And all of the Doctor's greatest enemies, ones you've met and ones you've probably never heard of, banded together, created an alliance of the like which had never before been seen, and with the help of the Silence, they would create a trap for him, one he couldn't resist, and prevent the entire event from happening. The Pandorica."

"But they caused it, didn't they?" Rose asked, shaking her head. "How bad was it?"

"I wasn't there for most of it," River admitted. "I was - flying the TARDIS while it exploded, but from what Rory told me, it was a rather bleak and depressing two thousand years with the only 'sun' in the Universe an exploding TARDIS."

"Oh. My. God." Jack said, staring at her. "I can't believe - I think I might have some kind of - there's something there - not the Medusa Cascade, but something about no stars, and a really, really close and weak sun," he said.

"Don't focus too hard," River said, shrugging. "What's important is that the only way for the Doctor to fix that was to essentially reboot the Universe. Big Bang Two, he called it. Inside that perfect prison was a tiny sample of the Universe that had been destroyed - all the atoms that ever existed - and all it needed was a spark," she said.

"Like an explosion that was happening across all of space and time," Jack said, shaking his head. "Only he would think of something like that - and even Big Ears and Leather wouldn't have been that stupid."

"Well, it worked," River snapped. "But the thing is, the cracks couldn't close until he was on the other side, completely erased from history," she finished.

"And he didn't go across until the night he first met little Amelia Pond," Rose finished, shaking her head. "If he'd crossed through any of the other cracks, it could have been completely different. But he chose that crack, at that particular time, to go back. He rebooted the Universe from that night."

"The question is, River Song, how do you know all this?" Jack asked, staring at her.

"Normally, this is where I smirk, and say 'spoilers', but being just as anomalous as I am, I think it's fair you both get some straight answers," she said, rolling her eyes. "Your Doctor thought he killed me in the Library, Rose. He's not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. And whenever he thinks that the TARDIS can't go near a particular time period or place, just remind him that there are other ways to travel. And never, ever believe a word Amelia Pond writes. Having said all of that, which, by the way, are nearly the only real hints for how to get by in the future you'll get from me, beyond the obvious, which is that time can be rewritten, as long as it isn't a fixed point, in which case, time can be _mostly_ rewritten, as long as it still looks pretty damn fixed, I'm like the two of you. You both remember what happened in the unwritten time, the time where the Doctor still existed.

The Doctor doesn't exist anymore. He sacrificed himself - he has been completely written out of time and space and history – he has never existed and never will. You're both like me - we're impossible things, the three of us. And that is because we have a special connection to the TARDIS. Time is in flux right now, and there are vast number of things that will never happen because they only happened because of him, or they will happen differently because he won't exist. Time has compensated for most of those things prior to 1996, and if we are very, very lucky, in 2010, Amelia Pond will remember her imaginary friend, and we will get the Doctor back, but that gives us another five years, give or take, that we have to sort out on our own - UNIT has been doing well, thus far."

What happened next was one of the most bizarre planning sessions Rose had ever attended. Fortified by enough tea to float a ship, supplied by Ianto who popped in and out whenever they needed him, she, River, and Jack cobbled together a timeline of events that they each recalled happening over the course of the next five years.

When they had it spread over several sheets of paper, they started to plan.

"Well, the Autons have already been dealt with, so that's one thing we can cross off," River said with a satisfied smile. "I'm a bit worried about the Weeping Angels, though. They're supposed to come out of their dormant state over in Wester Drumlins about now, but in the proper timeline, they were tricked into a quantum lock by surrounding the TARDIS. When it disappeared from between them, they were left staring at each other - trapping them in a ring. Not sure how we could manage something like that, honestly. Let's put that down as something to brainstorm on."

Rose wrote down '_Weeping Angels - Wester Drumlins_' on a fresh sheet of paper, and they turned back to the lists.

"I've already recruited Owen," Jack said. "I pre-empted the timeline a bit with some of my Torchwood team, so most of the things that affect them can be subverted. But we're looking at the Slitheen infiltrating next year, and that's something that we're going to have to deal with ourselves. It wasn't directly caused by the Doctor, though it was stopped by him. We probably can't prevent it, but we can handle the fallout. It all depends on how we want to manipulate it."

"I think in the interests of preserving the timeline, we should stick to the events as closely as possible. Let them infiltrate the government and gather at Downing Street. We take them out the same way the Doctor did - with Mickey on the outside," River said, nodding. "It eliminates any inconsistencies that could crop up and create problems later on, and cements Harriet Jones' position - she was meant to be the harbinger of Britain's Golden Age. Torchwood destroyed that. Without Torchwood, we can bring that back in line."

"That's settled then," Rose said, marking it down under her notation about the Weeping Angels. "What's next?"

"The Blaidd Drwg project," Jack said, frowning. Rose's eyes flashed gold. "Without the TARDIS, I don't know how we can stop that without killing Margaret."

"We have the _Blaidd Drwg_," River said, smirking. "Rose, you can create the same effect as the TARDIS itself, with my help. We can save her, and Jack can use his Vortex Manipulator to take the egg to Raxacoricofallapatorius."

Rose frowned, but made the note. "You disapprove, Rosie," Jack observed.

"She tried to kill us, Jack," she said. "_Twice_." She took a deep breath. "She nearly tore the TARDIS apart. She almost opened the Rift. She tried to destroy the planet. Again, _twice_. I don't have unlimited mercy, despite what the Doctor may think. Yes, I think she should die for what she's done. But the TARDIS judged her worthy of a second chance, so I'll abide by the TARDIS' judgment."

"This one is tricky," River said, her face furrowing. "There was never any clear evidence if the Sycorax were drawn to the Earth because the Doctor was releasing his regeneration energy, or if they were truly interested in the Earth before that. We should be on high alert for a possible invasion, have a plan prepared to launch a moment's notice, but keep it from going to a panic."

"I agree," Rose said. "The Doctor seemed to think the Pilot Fish were drawn to him, which would indicate that it was the Doctor they were after, since his energy could power their spaceship for quite some time, with the Earth's resources as a bonus, but there was no indication that they knew he was here before that. They may have been coming here before that. It's a solid plan."

She marked down the Sycorax as their next point of interest and they continued to the next thing that they needed to address.

"LINDA shouldn't be an issue, and neither should the Abzorbaloff, since the Doctor doesn't exist," Rose said. "With no Doctor, the group would never form, nor gain the creature's attention."

"Agreed," River and Jack said.

"H. C. Clements shouldn't even exist, either," Jack said, looking at the list again, "since it was one of Torchwood's shell companies. I was actually wondering if we could bring Donna on here, River?"

"Yes, with certain precautions," River agreed. "Rose, you'd have to - help her."

Rose closed her eyes, thinking of the sour yellow notes of this broken timeline, and nodded. "Let me interview her, Jack. I'll find a way to scan her. If I can prevent the bleed through, then she can come on."

"You misunderstand me, Rose," River said. "The problem isn't bleed through. On the 26 June 2010, everyone, everywhere, who ever knew the Doctor will remember him. Even Donna Noble. If we can't help her, her mind will burn."

Rose's pen fell. And then her brain caught up. "But the Medusa Cascade never happened," she said slowly, her words measured and thoughtful. "So, would she still have the mind of a Time Lord?"

River and Jack looked at each other. "I hadn't actually considered that, to be honest," River said. "But you're right. There's every possibility that Donna Noble will have a completely human mind. Jack, get her in for an interview, let Rose scan her. If she's broken in any way, we can fix her, prepare her mind for when the Doctor returns. If not, then when he does, it's better that she's here, so we can stop her from quite possibly killing him - and then killing him again."

They laughed - Rose certainly wouldn't put it past the redhead. The woman reminded her quite a bit of her own mother, and she wondered if _he'd_ noticed that resemblance. It was a comforting thought.

"So, without Torchwood, the chances that we'll have to deal with the Racnoss are rather slim, yeah?" she asked, and the other two nodded. "Then we'll put it on our unlikely list and move on, which brings us to the Titanic. Can't believe that one, myself, but it just bloody figures."

"I'll deal with that one. Bug in the right ear, investigation into that ship long before it leaves port, as well as its owner, and the Titanic will be nowhere near Earth. Should prevent any problems, but we'll create an emergency back-up plan just in case," River said.

"And we're absolutely, positively sure that the Daleks and Cybermen aren't coming through?" Jack asked. "There's no Canary Wharf?"

"We can't be positive of anything, Jack, but without Torchwood poking around, it's very unlikely," River said.

Rose ran through her memories, painful as they were, of Canary Wharf, and hit one massive snag. "Except there's something you've forgotten," she said, closing her eyes and swallowing hard. "The Void Ship - the Daleks. They came through first. They're the ones that punched the hole in reality that Torchwood was widening. The one that the TARDIS fell through when we landed in Pete's World the first time. The one the Cybermen came through later. It was the Daleks that started it all. Not the Doctor. And it's probably already happened."

"Except without the Doctor, the Daleks were wiped out of existence on Skaro very early into their creation, along with Davros," River said softly. "The Doctor has always felt responsible for the Daleks because he was once given the choice to commit genocide on the Daleks and he refused, before they were a galactic threat. It's possible that without the Doctor, the Time War never happened. The Void Ship never existed."

"So when he said it was his fault," Rose said, tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes, "he honestly believes it. He didn't commit genocide once, and because of that, he had to watch his own people destroy themselves until he had no choice but to destroy countless civilizations. Oh my god."

"If there is a god, I very much doubt he has much to do with any of us," River said, shaking her head.

Jack cleared his throat. "The next major threat was Harold Saxon," he said. "Without the TARDIS, I don't think we need to worry about him."

"Saxon's not an issue," River said. "But the Krillitanes are. Luckily they are easily dealt with."

Rose shuddered in remembrance, but added the bat-like creatures to her list. "What's this about the Rift opening, Jack?"

"That was my Torchwood team, Rosie, not the Doctor, so I think we're going to have to handle that," he said.

She added it to the list, and they shuffled some of the papers, continuing on.

"We're getting into some things that my Doctor has done now," River said. "Prisoner Zero was tied directly to the Cracks, and I doubt we'll have to deal with that, but I think we can handle it if we do. Put it down as one of those that we'll have an emergency plan for, but probably won't have to handle as it's a Doctor-related emergency," she added, shaking her head. "Have you noticed how many of our problems are directly related to him and completely independent of the Earth itself? I swear this planet gets less attention when he's not around."

Rose laughed at that. Ianto came in with a top off for each of them and Rose smiled up at him.

"Go home, kid," Jack said. "Kiss your girlfriend. Tell her you're sorry for staying late at the office again. For god's sake, remember to buy her flowers this time. And take tomorrow off."

"Yes, Captain," the Welshman said, rolling his eyes. "Should I let Mr. Smith in, since you had a car sent round for him an hour ago, or should I leave him out in the waiting room?"

"Send in Mickey Mouse," Jack said. "And remember what I said about the flowers."

"The Captain will see you now," Ianto said, and Mickey muttered something from the doorway as he pushed past the other man, who politely shut the door behind him.

Rose jumped up and hugged Mickey. "Sorry, Micks," she said, pulling up another chair for her friend. "We didn't know you were out there waiting."

"Yeah, well that's cause the suit wouldn't announce me, would he?" he grumbled.

Jack stood and hugged Mickey. "It's good to see you, Mickey Mouse," he said. "Not that you remember me, but we were friends, once upon a time."

"Yeah, Rose mighta mentioned that," Mickey grumbled. "Don't think she said anything about a bushy-haired blonde broad, but I might not have caught that part."

"Professor River Song," she said. "Nice to meet you. Sorry, we're trying to sort out which events that are coming up we're going to have to deal with. How do you feel about blowing up 10 Downing Street?" she asked with a smirk.

"You're serious?" Mickey asked, his eyes wide.

"Deadly," River said, shuffling more papers around. "Did we put down the Royal Hope incident?"

"No, but that definitely wasn't his fault," Jack said. "My team was tracking that plasmavore for days before he showed up. That was just good timing on his part."

Rose added that to the list and looked at the papers in River's hand. "Lazarus? Oh, god, I have those memories in my head. That was another right place, right time thing," she said.

"In a sense, yes," River said, "but Saxon was behind that one, so I think that's a watch and see incident, with an emergency back-up plan in place."

"So you lot are just sitting here planning out the next - what - ten years?" Mickey asked. "You're barking!"

"Welcome to UNIT," Jack said. "We'll get you the official orientation on Monday, but you're going to be working with Tosh in computers from now on. You're a genius, Mickey Smith, and we need more people like you defending the Earth. And trust me, when the Doctor comes back, and you remember, you're going to want to be working somewhere that can help you."

"Rose?" Mickey asked, looking at her for reassurance.

"I trust him, Mickey. If he says this is where you should be, you'll be safe here," she said, jotting down notes about Lazarus on her sheet.

"Without the Medusa Cascade, do we have to worry about the Adipose using the Earth as a breeding planet?" Jack asked.

"Put it on the watch list," River said, waving a hand dismissively as she scanned down the list.

"ATMOS," Rose said. "You're worried about ATMOS."

"Exactly," River said. "Without the Doctor, in Donna's aborted timeline in the parallel, it took Jack's Torchwood team sacrificing themselves on the Sontaran ship to destroy it. We'll need something far, far better than that if we want to prevent massive loss of life."

Rose wrote ATMOS in large letters on her list, nodding as she did, and looked at River as reassuringly as she could. "We'll figure it out. We have what we didn't have before - years to plan."

"Thank you, Rose," River said.

"Which leaves the 456," Jack said, closing his eyes and lowering his head.

"And here, Jack, we have the same advantage that we have with ATMOS," River said. "We know that they are coming. We have years to prepare. We know what works against them, we know how to stop them, how to destroy them, and you have weapons at your disposal that you didn't have last time: you have me, Rose, and Mickey."

"Thank you," he whispered.

With shaking hands, Rose scrawled the numbers on the sheet.

"If we survive all of that," River said, her voice unsteady, "then we will all be there for the wedding of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, on the day that Amy remembers her imaginary friend, and the Doctor returns. The timeline will be restored. It's essential that we do as little to damage things that have happened as possible, while preventing as many of these disasters as we can."

"Micks, I know you don't remember any of this," Rose said. "If you don't want to stay - I know this has to be boring for you," she offered.

"No way, babe," he said. "This is my job now, looking out for you. And if that means sitting here, taking notes while you lot sort out how to stop the world from ending, then that's what I'll do."

The three Impossible Things in the room looked at him with pride shining in their eyes.

"Mickey Smith, you are a _star_!" River said, her eyes moist.

"Yeah, and don't any of you forget it," he said. "I'm not the tin dog!" He made a face of utter confusion. "Why the hell - Rose, was there a tin dog?" he asked.

Rose started laughing. "Yes, actually, there was. Right before you started travelling with us, you said you didn't want to be the tin dog and asked to come along."

"Nothing is ever truly forgotten," River said, a soft smile on her face. "Other things might leak through. That's okay."

Rose's eyes were gritty and she rubbed them, trying to get that awful feeling out. The window behind River was just starting to brighten, and she realised that the sun must be coming up. They'd been at this all night. She caught herself yawning, and wondered if it was natural, or triggered by the sudden realisation, and she laughed.

"Sounds like it's time to get Rosie to bed," Jack teased. "C'mon, we've got some barracks downstairs you guys can bunk in for the weekend."

River bit her lip and looked at them for a moment while they shuffled the papers into some semblance of order and Jack found a folder to put them in, handing it off to Rose for safe-keeping. "Would it be alright if I stayed, as well? I know I'm not officially UNIT staff, but I was hoping I could be listed as a consultant for the project," she said, for the first time, Rose heard something that could almost be labelled uncertainty in the other woman's voice.

"I'll set you three up in the officer's quarters," Jack said without missing a beat. "It's a bit nicer than the standard barracks, and you'll have your own head."

The officer's quarters were far from luxurious, but there was a private bathroom, complete with an enclosed shower, the beds were comfortable, and it was below ground, so it was cool and blessedly dark. Rose was asleep within minutes.


	3. The Doctor's Wife and the Bad Wolf

**Chapter 3.**

**The Doctor's Wife and the Bad Wolf**

When she woke, it was to find that River was sitting up in her bunk across the room, paging sadly through a journal, its covers worn, pages yellowed with age and completely, utterly blank. Mickey was still snoring beneath her, knackered from the night before.

"S'it morning?" Rose asked, running a hand through her tangled hair.

"Early afternoon, but no worry," River said, closing the journal. The faded covers were a shade of blue that caused a sharp pang in Rose's chest. "Jack's off with his team on a mission. We're all to rest as much as possible today." She noticed Rose staring at the journal. "You're welcome to look at it if you like. The pages are all blank until he comes back."

River stood and passed the book to her, and Rose took it, pressing her fingers into the panelled leather cover, running the pads of her fingers along the grooves in the worn fabric. "I thought I was mad, y'know," she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. "Wasn't sure if I wanted it all to be real, but I took the job in the shop - just in case I wasn't mad, in case it wasn't all a dream." She felt the tears slipping down her cheeks but she didn't take her hands from the journal to wipe them away. "This is the TARDIS. Those Autons, last night - all of last night, really - it didn't make it real. But this book," she laughed, a bitter, angry laugh. "A blank, blue book with nothing in it - it's real now. Because nowhere else on Earth does this shade of blue exist."

"I know," River said, rubbing her back in small circles. "The TARDIS made that journal. The Doctor gave it to me. I used it to keep track of our travels together, since our lives happened back-to-front. We used to sync our diaries."

Rose tried to imagine her first Doctor keeping a diary and started laughing, trying to keep it quiet so as not to wake Mickey, but when his laughter joined hers, she knew he'd been eavesdropping.

"Why do I think that's funny?" he asked.

"It just is, trust me," Rose said, shaking her head and blinking back the tears.

"I never met your first Doctor, Rose, but I understand he was something quite spectacular," River said.

Rose handed back the diary, with its blank pages - adventures that had never happened. "He was fantastic. Worth everything and then some," she whispered, thinking of the adventures they'd had.

"We're going to get him back, Rose," River promised, crossing the room.

They took turns showering, and spent most of the day sleeping, making idle small talk, and eating the meals that were delivered by uniformed men. Rose was too tired, physically and emotionally, to care if they were guards or not.

* * *

><p>Before working with UNIT, Rose had considered herself disciplined, physically fit, and fairly intelligent. While Jack ran missions with the team he'd been given (according to River, pre-empting Owen, Ianto, and Tosh was fine, but the rest of their team had to wait until it fell into the 'natural' timeline to recruit them), and Mickey attended uni and worked heavily in computer sciences with Tosh, Rose's days were almost completely devoted to physical training, weapons training, and the most bizarre series of classes she'd ever taken. River, of course, was her instructor.<p>

On their first full day of 'employment' at UNIT, Jack had explained that while Mickey had not, in either universe, done a course at uni, Rose had gotten degrees in both astrophysics and astronomy in the parallel world. ; UNIT was willing to produce documentation to that effect, giving her glowing recommendations from professors they had on staff in the subjects, but that they wanted her to focus her studies on her other skills.

And so after having herself driven into the ground during some form of PT, and then beaten half to a pulp by whatever martial arts instructor she had that day, usually with River at her side, the two women honed their skills with a wide variety of weapons before retiring to a comfortable library, where they would put their feet up, and the omnipotent Ianto brought them fantastic tea while River lectured on whatever subject that happened to strike her fancy that day.

They covered Time Traces, philosophical theories, various ethical systems from across the Universe, (with Rose adding in a few of the more interesting ones that had cropped up in Pete's World), and even literature. One of River's favourite, and Rose's least favourite, topics was the Bad Wolf, both in legend and in reality.

"What you have to understand, sweetie," River said one afternoon as they were curled up cosily in their favourite pair of brown leather armchairs, legs tucked beneath them with a piecrust table serving as a buffer between them, a teapot and a plate of petit fours within easy reach in front of a large holographic window that was centuries ahead of its time and tended to show a different scene. On this particular winter afternoon, the breath-taking view was an island vista, complete with coconut trees and the ocean in the background. River paused to pop a cake in her mouth and savour it before continuing. "Sorry," she said, ducking her head guiltily. "What you have to understand is that the Bad Wolf phenomenon was first documented in London in 2006. It was specifically designed to get your attention — by you, I might add — but it garnered the attention of the local police as well. The graffiti seemed to have no purpose. There were rumours that it was a gang, but no gang ever came out with that name. Kids would scrawl the words with no idea why they were doing it; when caught, they'd just say it seemed like a good thing to write."

"And they did it because the words were already there," Rose said, sighing deeply. "Because I did that."

This was actually something she hated to think about. Since she'd come to accept that she wasn't actually mad, but rather a dimension-hopping, time-travelling, not-quite-human who was essentially reliving her own timeline with her memories of the original intact thanks to something that hadn't happened in the new timeline but had happened across all of time and space and therefore couldn't be erased, making her quite possibly the most anomalous being in all of creation, she tried to avoid thinking too much about the Bad Wolf. Dream Rose, Other Rose, Future or Past Rose, whatever you wanted to call the Rose that she would never become - that Rose had come to grips with the Bad Wolf when the half-human Doctor had completed a bond that had begun the moment she'd absorbed the Vortex. But remembering that experience and physically living it were two separate things, and she didn't quite know how to wrap her brain around the entire thing.

"Exactly," River said. "But it was beyond that. The Blaidd Drwg Project. The signs on Shan Shen, including the sign on the TARDIS itself, all changing to say Bad Wolf once Donna had given the Doctor the warning you passed along. Dårlig Ulv-Stranden - Bad Wolf Bay. You saw everything in that moment, Rose. What's perhaps most interesting is that you would have seen this, too. This whole, impossible series of events. The Bad Wolf planned for this, made it possible for you to retain your memories, possibly even for me and Jack to be here to support you."

"Say you're right, River," Rose said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. "Just, for a moment, imagine that the Bad Wolf knew all of this was coming, and planned for it all. Why separate us in the first place? Why go through all that trouble to trap me there, and abandon me on the other side with someone else, even if it was another him, if I was always supposed to end up with him to begin with?"

"Because he thinks he knows best for everyone," River said. "He thinks that what's best for everyone else is to be as far away from him as possible, though he's selfish enough to keep them for as long as he can. But in the end, they leave him, because they have to; one way or the other," she looked away for a moment, perhaps unconsciously looking towards that impossibly-blue journal Rose had tucked away earlier. "In theory, he knows that time can be rewritten, Rose, but he'll never believe that it should be - not in a way that benefits him."

There was something Rose had been meaning to say, a question she'd been wanting to ask since River had first appeared. She was only nineteen, and there was no telling how old River was, but she'd travelled with that mad man long enough, and she had his memories up to the creation of the half-human metacrisis; she knew the name River Song, and she knew enough to be, if not wildly jealous, then at least highly speculative of the other woman's motives. Rose opened her eyes and took a deep breath, staring the other woman dead in the face.

"River, until that moment on the beach, there was one distinct advantage you had over me," she said. "But as of right now, we are both the Doctor's wife. What, precisely, do you gain from rewriting his life?"

"Are we?" River said, raising an eyebrow. "Funnily enough, I always thought only one of us was." Rose noticed that the other woman never said which one of them she thought held the title. She reached into her seemingly bottomless bag and pulled out a thick, leather-bound book. "This is one of the references I first discovered when I was researching the Doctor at Luna University," River said, handing Rose the book.

Rose took it, reading the worn gold embossed title, _A Definitive History of Earth_. "I'm sorry, River, but what does this have to do with anything?" she said, holding the book out to the other woman.

"That particular volume - it's an encyclopaedia, in case you were curious - covers the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And as for what the book has to do with anything, I suggest you look into the chapter on the Bad Wolf," River said with a smirk.

Rolling her eyes, Rose obliged, her jaw falling open as the chapter's facing page showed what appeared to be a highly intricate drawing of circles. To anyone else, it would be incomprehensible. But Rose recognised it for what it was; Old High Gallifreyan - in a book that was written in English. And what it translated into - well, it could start or ends wars, at least part of it.

"There are three people in the Universe that can read that," River said. "Two of them are sitting in this room, and the third technically doesn't exist. There is no translation matrix that exists now, nor will there ever exist one that could ever decipher the language. Nor would any scanner ever recognise it as a language at all. Any archaeologist would simply dismiss it as beautiful, symbolistic art, and move on." River shook her head. "Turn to the publishing information," she said.

Rose did, and there, under the standard information, was another circular design, smaller than the other, that she had no trouble identifying: she'd seen it before, after all, loads of times. Just two words, everywhere she went: Bad Wolf.

"It shows up in every edition, and has since the year 200100," River said. "The Bad Wolf created this encyclopaedia. The Bad Wolf scattered bits of Old High Gallifreyan throughout the series. Whenever the books are recopied, each "drawing" is recaptured using the highest quality scanning equipment available at the time, and faithfully reproduced so that not so much as a single swirl from the original images are missing. But it's no coincidence that the most dangerous, powerful word in the entire Universe appears interlinked with your name, Rose Tyler, nor that the drawing is always, always, facing the chapter on the Bad Wolf in the volume that covers the time period of Earth in which you lived. As I said, I'm fairly certain one of us is the Doctor's wife - I never said it was me. It must have baffled him, all those years, how I knew his name that day, knowing he had to have told me, knowing he would have to tell me, and never quite being able to bring himself to do it, to complete that circular paradox."

"But - you love him," Rose managed around the lump in her throat. She couldn't tell if her tears were for herself or for River - maybe they were for both of them.

"Do I? Or did I love the idea of him, much as a child loves the idea of a superhero or a fairy tale prince who comes to rescue her from a dragon or a monster?" River's laughter was bitter. "In what way, exactly, did I differ in my love for him than the uncrowned Queen of France did in hers? We both created an image in our minds of what he was, and we loved that image. For her, he was a Lonely Angel, despite the fact that he obviously had you - the loneliness she saw was not something she could have fixed, and even with such a brief foray into his mind, she would have seen that. And for me?" She sighed. "At first, he was that hero, saving me from myself. And as he grew less and less heroic, and more angry, I became stronger, harder, and more bitter, knowing that even as I loved him more, he knew me less. And when he was finally no more than a stranger who knew me not at all, a stranger whose name I held because it was printed in a language that I foolishly believed only we two could read, I hated him. I hated him for taking the coward's way out, for never properly making me his wife, for having his name written across the stars with yours, even though I didn't know who you were."

"I'm sorry," Rose said, reaching across the table for the other woman's hand. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alright now, sweetie," River said. "I thought myself quite, quite grown up then, you see. But it wasn't until I was rescued from that by a friend, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery, that I realised how very young I really was. In some ways, Rose, I was younger than you were when you stepped into that box the first time. You'd at least had your heart properly broken before you ever met him. I didn't even know what that word meant."

"That's one word we all have to learn the hard way," Rose said, squeezing River's hand. "And it means something different to each of us."

River squeezed back and smiled. "Believe it or not, Rose, that was a very long time ago for me," she said. "I've had more years than you can imagine to get over that daft man, and I had the help of a very good man - the very best man I've ever known - to make it through that and beyond."

Rose had her suspicions about who that might be, but kept silent. "So, if you're from that far in the future, where is the proper River Song?"

"Oh, right now, Mels is raising hell with her best friend Amelia Pond in Leadworth. She's an orphan, you see," River said. "And the River who was there when the Pandorica opened, who was flying an exploding TARDIS? She pops in on them, from time to time, watching over them from a distance, but it's too painful for her. She suspects the Doctor has a plan to come back, but she hasn't a clue what it is, and - well, quite frankly, she's a bit useless at the moment. Her whole life was the Doctor, and in a Universe where he doesn't exist, she doesn't know what to do with herself."

"That's so sad," Rose said. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right, sweetie," River said, cheering up. "Tomorrow we'll work on focusing your Time Senses a bit, because you should have them, at least in theory. And you might be able to see a bit of what I see. Jack can, if he tries very, very hard, but frankly, he hasn't the patience for it at this point in his life. He gets better with age, but then most men do."

"What do you see?" Rose shifted so that she was facing River, who looked across the room as though staring into a deep well.

"Endless possibilities," she said, her voice growing distant. "Not quite as much as you could see as the Bad Wolf, but nearly so. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be. Most of what I see are the probabilities. Of several, two timelines are forming, two sets of memories sitting side-by-side in my head, rewriting so much of my life, beginning as early as my infancy, though for you, I suppose it would begin with a blue envelope. If this works, I'll have conflicting memories, and I won't know you, then, Rose. I won't trust you, and I won't like you. Back-to-front, remember."

"You'll think you're his wife, and so, too, will he," Rose guessed.

"Yes, precisely," River said. "But - it resolves itself. I can't tell you how. I've already told you more than I ever will tell him. In the other timeline, you're not there. He never once mentioned your name, but you were in all of those books I studied. Dame Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate, banished from England by Queen Victoria in the 1779 only to be born over two hundred years later. Obviously a companion, but while I could get him to talk about all of the others, over time, I never mentioned you, and neither did he, despite the room across from his that no one was ever, ever allowed to touch. He was and will always be _your _Doctor, Rose Tyler, no matter how many regenerations he has."

"I'm not so sure about that, myself," Rose said, the words coming out slowly, as this was something she'd been considering herself over the past several months of working with UNIT. "He was clinging to something he'd lost, before, but the dynamic between us changed when he did. It's bound to change again, especially given the circumstances. What you see are probabilities, River, you said it yourself. They aren't certainties."

They changed the subject then, moved on to lighter topics, and soon their lessons shifted focus until they were working almost entirely on attuning Rose's Time Sense. As frustrating as it was for Rose, she was highly limited in what she could 'see', and it was clearest when she was touching River in some way, as though the other woman's presence amplified it. They spent an entire afternoon just speculating on that as the time for the "crash landing" in the Thames grew nearer. As hard as it was for Rose to believe, she and Mickey had been with UNIT for nearly a year, and her mind and body were like well-oiled machines, and the things Mickey could do on computers now was nothing short of miraculous, as far as she was concerned.

Jack and Mickey had joined them for this particular "lesson", and the four of them were nestled comfortably in their little library, unwinding after a mission that had pulled all of them out into the field. Rose and Mickey were being called on more missions, and Rose was grateful for all the training she'd received, both in the parallel world's Torchwood and with UNIT.

She had her feet, encased in fuzzy pink socks with purple polka dots on them, propped on the low table in front of her, a cup of steaming tea warming her hands, and a plate of delicious petit fours sitting on the little round table at her side — one of these days she was really going to ask Ianto where he found those things; they were clearly heaven-made-into-tiny-cakes and she couldn't get enough of them — particularly the lemon ones. With a pang, she noticed that, as usual, there was a rather healthy portion of banana ones that no one would touch, and she knew that Jack always ordered them in memory of the man they were all there to save.

"I've been thinking over your problem, Rose," River said, sitting her teacup on the table between their chairs. "Without the proper equipment, which frankly doesn't exist on Earth, in any time period — or, really, anywhere but the TARDIS — I can't confirm my suspicions, but I'd been basing our lessons on the assumption that you were rather like me. And it's still possible you are, of course," she added, holding up a hand to stop any questions. "The both of us were exposed, at different times in our lives, to the Vortex at its rawest form. You, by absorbing the Heart of the TARDIS, and me — well, for that I can only say 'spoilers' and wait for you to find out on your own. I did tell you that there were things that I wouldn't be able to tell you."

They nodded, though Jack looked put out, and Mickey just rolled his eyes. More than the others, he'd heard 'spoilers' more times than he could count.

"I know you're familiar with regeneration, so I obviously don't have to explain it to you, but I have to ask if you've ever personally experienced it." It was delicately put, and Rose wasn't sure exactly what River was asking.

"D'you mean, have I ever witnessed it, firsthand, because you should know that I have, or d'you mean, have I ever personally regenerated?" Rose asked, looking at the other woman with open curiosity.

"Ah, yes, I suppose I could have been a bit clearer," River said, chuckling a bit. "I do, of course, know that you've witnessed the Doctor regenerating. It was the latter I was asking about, and judging by that look on your face, I'm going to guess that the answer to my question is no, and continue to postulate. My Time Sense wasn't nearly as developed as it is when I was first exposed to the Vortex." Here River paused, as though something were paining her greatly, before taking a deep breath and continuing. "In fact, I'm not sure I was aware of it until after I'd regenerated the first time, and even then it was far weaker than yours is now. When I regenerated the second time, it was better, but still not fantastic. But the more time I spent with the TARDIS, developing my relationship with her, the stronger it became."

"So," Jack said, frowning, "you think Rosie will be able to regenerate — and that her Time Sense will get stronger each time she does?"

"I'm not sure, honestly," River admitted. "Like Rose, I'm 'human-plus'. I suspect we're the same sort of 'human-plus', but I was — oh, what's a delicate word for it — enhanced, a bit, I suppose you could say, in order to make that 'plus' just a bit stronger." River looked very uncomfortable at having to admit to any of this, and Rose felt a pang of sympathy for the other woman.

Mickey's eyes were darting between the two women, as though he were trying to see the similarities between them and failing, as though their abnormalities should be apparent on the surface. Jack had hunched forward, with his elbows on his knees, paying rapt attention to the "lesson", absorbing it all.

"On the other hand," River said, looking between them before resting her eyes on Rose, "my exposure to the Vortex, to the TARDIS' Heart, was gentle and mild compared to what yours was. I've never held that power in my hands. I've never made all of Time bow to my command. And as I've said, repeatedly, time is in flux right now. It's possible that just because I have no 'memory' of Rose regenerating in either of the prominent timelines in my head doesn't mean it doesn't happen. That could be protected because I don't need to know it."

"How many times have you regenerated?" Rose asked, curious.

"Spoilers," River said, smirking. "Though, I suspect you may do well to remember something very interesting that regeneration energy is capable of, at least in the first fifteen hours, regardless of what you may be told otherwise."

'Witchcraft,' the leader of the Sycorax had called it, Rose remembered. 'Time Lord,' the _new_ new Doctor had said, some of the darkness he'd kept simmering so well beneath the surface in his last body coming forward in that moment. She suspected that was what River wanted her to remember, though — perhaps something to do with the way the hand had grown back. Maybe it was one of those River-things that would make sense when it happened. She filed it away for future reference.

"So, if I can regenerate, my Time Sense should get stronger when I do — if I do?" Rose asked, bringing the subject back round to the topic of the day.

"Unless you spend a lot of time on the TARDIS, which naturally seems to boost any abilities you have from that 'plus' aspect of your nature," River confirmed. "Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask you about. How long were you in that parallel before you started to get sick?"

Rose stared at her — she hadn't told anyone about that in the other timeline. Not her mum, nor Pete, nor the Torchwood doctor that had been checking her out after all of her dimension hops, and especially not Micks. She hadn't told anyone, because she didn't want them to stop her from trying to get back.

"Don't try to deny it," River said. "I've told you, you wear your emotions all over your face. Honestly, you need to work on your poker face."

"Dunno," Mikey said, half-serious. "She's got a decent resting bitchface when she wants to have."

"It's true," Jack said. "The problem is that it's almost never seen because she's nearly always happy and smiling, and when she isn't, she's sad. But give her a moment to just — be — and BOOM! Pokerface of Doom!"

Even Rose had to laugh at that one. But River wouldn't allow them to help Rose deflect the question. "How long?" she prompted.

"Dunno, really," she said, hedging slightly. "Maybe a few months. Started getting headaches, I guess. Thought maybe I wasn't sleeping enough, what with the cannon and everything. Then they got worse, right around the time we started making the jumps. I fainted a few times, thankfully no one saw, had a few nosebleeds. Once we started making the early jumps, I could pass it off as a side-effect of the canon." She shrugged. "I didn't want anyone to worry."

"The golden song, you couldn't really hear it anymore, could you?" River asked. Rose shook her head. "That was the TARDIS. You were cut off from her, and you were dying. If you hadn't made your way back, you would have died within a few years."

"But we've got almost five years before the TARDIS comes back!" Jack shouted, knocking over the coffee table as he jumped to his feet.

"Rose, can you hear the golden song now?" River asked.

"S'wrong," Rose said, closing her eyes and concentrating on it. "S'all sour and yellow. Off — I dunno. It's there, but it's — so _wrong_."

"Nothing is ever truly forgotten," Mickey murmured. "That's what you said to me, the night we showed up here, remember? Is she — I dunno — keeping that TARDIS-thing alive because she remembers it, and so it's keeping her alive, too — only since it's not really real, it sounds wrong to her?"

"I've said it once, and I will say it again." River grinned at him. "Mickey Smith. You. Are. A. _Star_."

Mickey ducked his head and blushed.

"You're absolutely right, of course. The TARDIS exists, in a sort of half-existence, because we three remember her. And Rose also has other things now, that she didn't have during those years in the parallel world, that are helping to keep her stable. She has the bond with the half-human Time Lord, which strengthened her connection to the Vortex, made it possible for her to survive all those years when she was alone with only mild symptoms, I'd guess. And here, she also has her connections to me and Jack. Jack, having been directly created with the power of the Bad Wolf, carries a bit of the Vortex inside him — not enough to make him human-plus, but enough that it helps to stabilise her. Being around me, another 'human-plus' with a connection to the TARDIS, and therefore, the Vortex, helps keep the symptoms at bay as well."

"So, no dying for Rose Tyler, then," Jack said, nodding. "Always good to know. And she'll get stronger Time Sense from regeneration, if she's able, and prolonged exposure to the TARDIS. And — if I understand it, the latter isn't really an option anyway, because without the TARDIS, she's going to die?"

"She doesn't have to live in the TARDIS, no," River said, shaking her head. "At least I don't think she should have to do. But at least a casual visit, every few years, to keep from getting sick, as well as staying in her own universe, ought to do the trick."

Rose was honestly a bit relieved at that. This Doctor who could so casually rewrite the entire history of the Universe, who could unwrite everything that had ever happened to them, who could so very casually ignore that his companion had never so much as heard of a Dalek when he'd taken her with him, even though the skies had been full of them only a few years before - did she truly want to travel with that Doctor. What had Jack called him? "The man who forgets". He seemed very, very good at that, but if that was the case…

There was something not right with that description, something so very not right.

Rose pieced together what she remembered of everything that had happened to bring about this alternate timeline she and the others were living, everything that could possibly have brought her back to this Universe. The Pandorica was the key, absolutely, but that Pandorica had only the molecules of the Universe as it had existed in the moment it had been created - and she hadn't existed in that timeline. It was him — the Doctor — "the man who forgets" who had brought her back, somehow.

She voiced her theory and River looked at her, shaking her head sadly. "Oh, sweetie, I wish that were true, so very, very much."

Mickey frowned at her, getting his back up at River's dismissal of Rose's theory. "Why can't it be true? You keep going on about how much Rose means to this Doctor-bloke, yeah? Why couldn't he have been the one that brought her back?"

It wasn't River that answered, but Jack. "Because the Doctor wasn't the one with that crack pouring into his brain — that was Amy Pond, and that's what all of this hinges on — her ability to remember the Doctor in four years, bring him back, and reset time. For him to have brought Rose back, the way Amy is going to bring the Doctor back, he'd have to have been on this side of the crack when she was pulled back over, and that's not what happened. What happened is he disappeared from time. He was unwritten. All the things he ever did were erased. The things he did that affected Rose's life never happened."

Mickey frowned, shook his head, and said, "Nope, still not getting it. How is it going to work when he comes back — won't she just be pulled back?"

Jack looked at River, as though to say 'this one is all you'.

"There is no easy answer to why these things weren't rewritten exactly the same — the Universe, as it is, right now, will fall back into line on 26 June 2010. We four are preserving as much of the original timeline as possible, because that is what the Doctor's companions do, even when the Doctor doesn't exist — we do what we can, to the best of our not-inconsiderable abilities, and we make sure that the world as he remembers it is as close to what he left it as it can be. The problem is that we cannot recreate every event, and once erased, they can never be reproduced. Canary Wharf, Torchwood, the Medusa Cascade — these events cannot be recreated. And these three events shaped her future."

Mickey just shook his head again. "You know, your logic is never gonna make sense to me. I'm going to bed."


	4. World War III

**Chapter 4.**

**World War III**

Three weeks passed before Rose was woken by her alarm blaring from across the room. Over the past year, she, River, Mickey, and Jack had taken to sharing a flat deep inside UNIT HQ, and the empty bed across the room startled her for a moment before she remembered that River was out of town on a mission to track down what seemed to be a Cyber signal originating in America, of all places. The timing was awful, but they couldn't just ignore it, even if today was the day—she, Mickey, and Jack would just have to stop the Slitheen and save Harriet Jones themselves.

Upstairs in the conference room, Jack was briefing his team. "Tosh, I need you to cover for Owen—he's a no-show today, and I'll have his ass for it later, but UNIT's going to need someone to inspect alien remains. I'm going to be on-site and I want you on the inside at Albion Hospital. Mickey Mouse, you're here, on base with the computers. I need you on the sub's weapon systems, ready to the fire the minute I give the word. Ianto and Rose have been working with administration inside Downing Street for the past several weeks, so we have our in. I'll be invited in as part of the panel of experts called in once the party really gets started. I'm a Code Nine, which will give me immediate access. I'll lead the Slitheen on a merry chase, ending up in the Cabinet Room with Rose, Ianto, and Harriet Jones. Once that happens, Mickey will issue the UNIT evac, getting civilians and all UNIT personnel out of Downing Street before he launches."

"And you're positive, Captain Cheesecake, that Rose and Ianto are going to survive this?" Mickey asked. The old nicknames had come out at some point over the past year, revived by Jack, and whenever things were particularly tense, the two reverted to them as a way of lessening tension.

"I'll be fine, Micks," Rose said. "Remember, all of this has already happened. We're just doing it a bit differently. If I have any say in this, once the Slitheen vacate the Cabinet Room, me, Ianto, and Harriet will take up residence in there and initiate the lockdown. Jack can flash himself in with his Vortex Manipulator, and we'll never even come within reach of those things." She shuddered.

"Bog monsters," Mickey muttered. "They look like bog monsters, right?"

They'd deliberately not shown the team pictures of the Slitheen, so they wouldn't fear the massive green aliens, and Rose raised an eyebrow at Mickey's description. It was exactly how he'd described them in the other timeline.

"Yeah, Micks," was all she said.

"I don't like this, babe, you know I don't, but I got your back. Anything happens to her, Cheesecake, and we'll see how long it takes you to come back to life when your head is in space and your body's burned to ashes."

Rose's eyes flashed gold for a moment, and everyone stared at her. "Rosie?" Jack asked, but she shook her head.

"Nothing," she said, brushing aside the timeline that had flared before her, a vision of a box with a preserved head—a preserved _live_ head—and a headless body that moved on its own, a warrior for the Papal Mainframe's cult of Silence. Winking at her from the box was a handsome face she recognised all too well. "Just—a timeline flaring into existence. Shouldn't have recognised it without River here to help, honestly, but it was very strong."

Jack looked at her oddly but nodded. "Well, you and Ianto need to head in for the last day of your internship if you don't want to rouse suspicions about what you know will happen."

Rose and Ianto left the room and took a bus into 'work' together, chatting about the fictional lives they'd created as covers for their 'characters'. They were mates from uni, according to their records, and they lived near one another, so they often commuted together. Rose was having boyfriend trouble, so she often asked Ianto for advice on the morning trip, and Ianto admitted to being attracted to someone at 'work', despite being engaged—Rose suspected that was not at all made up. She'd been watching Jack and Ianto for the better part of the past year, and the attraction on Jack's part was far from one-sided.

Granted, Rose ceded to herself, one would have to be blind, deaf, and mute to be completely immune to Jack but it was more than that with Ianto. Ianto wasn't just attracted to Jack—he looked after him, and Jack let him; which was more than he'd ever let anyone, except perhaps Rose, do for him.

She remembered that, hours later, as she, and not Jack, gave Mickey the command to fire the missile. Too slow—funny little human brain, how did she get around in it?—she hadn't _thought_, hadn't _remembered_ that sometimes, not everyone lived. Someone had to die for her and Harriet to escape the Slitheen inside the Cabinet room the first time. There'd been a low-level lackey, a secretary of some sort in the original timeline—and this time there was Ianto Jones.

Ianto who was cradled to Jack's chest as her ageless friend wept, rocking the body of what he'd confessed was his lover in the other timeline—his lover he'd failed to save—while they waited for a missile to come and blow them all up. And Harriet Jones, brave, indomitable Harriet Jones, holding tightly to Rose's hand when the blast hit, ordered Jack to his feet as though she were Prime Minister already.

"There will be a time to weep later, for your brave friend and all the others we lost, but now, Captain, it is time to rebuild," the woman said. Rose nodded. She, too, would weep. Mourn her mistakes, her carelessness, and move on.

"Take him back to HQ," she told Jack. "I can handle cleanup."

"You never handle cleanup," Jack said. "I can do this." Rose shook her head and hugged him.

"You shouldn't have to do it alone, not all the time," she argued. "No one should. Not you, not me, not River—not even the Doctor. That's why we have each other. Now go, Jack. Take him back, and let me handle this. And make sure Lisa knows what he really died for. None of the usual UNIT bullshit, yeah?"

"I'll tell her the truth," he promised, heading back into the steel room that should have been their salvation, not the promising young man's tomb.

The rest of the day was spent at the side of the up-and-coming star of British politics as she gave countless interviews about her harrowing experience inside Downing Street. Harriet Jones was being hailed as a hero, and the woman was certainly happy to share that status with those who had been trapped in the room with her until Rose pulled her aside and asked her to keep her own name and Jack's out of it. Ianto was given all the praise a hero of Earth, who had sacrificed his life so that others could escape, could be given, and before the day was out there were offerings being made to a large memorial in his honor. Before day's end, there was an astounding amount of support for Harriet Jones to become the next Prime Minister. By the time Rose finally made it back to her little flat inside HQ, she was exhausted.

River was in the sitting room, her eyes red, the chairs they'd moved up from the library a little over a month ago circling a round table in front of the fireplace where a merrily crackling fire was reflecting off a battered old silver tea service.

"Did you know?" Rose asked, pulling her sensible boots off by the door, stretching out her senses to see if Jack or Mickey were anywhere nearby.

"Jack's still with Lisa," River said. "Owen took Mickey to the pub to get him very, very drunk. The rest of us might be used to this life, but it hasn't happened to Mickey yet."

Sock-clad feet making no noise as she crossed the room and curled up in 'her' chair, Rose repeated her question.

"I knew it was a possibility," River admitted, closing her eyes. "Ianto Jones died in 2009 during the 456 incident. There was always the possibility that while his death wasn't a fixed point, exactly, that he was not going to survive to see the Doctor's return. Sending him with you on this mission was a calculated risk, but it wasn't my decision."

"You could have warned us, River," Rose snapped. "If we'd known that Ianto could have died, then we could have protected him better!"

"Whose life would you have given in his place, Rose?" River demanded, opening her eyes to glare at her. "Whose husband, whose son, whose brother would you have sacrificed so that Ianto Jones could live?"

Rose let the tears she had been holding back since the Slitheen had snapped her friend's neck earlier in the day free. "It was always going to be someone, wasn't it?"

She wasn't surprised when River didn't answer. River never did when Rose already knew the answers.

"Who else?" Rose asked.

"Owen," River said, her voice dull, eyes lifeless. "Tosh. Possibly Gwen. Jack will die in more ways than your or I could ever have imagined. But you saw how it happens—the final separation."

"They take him as a weapon against the Doctor," Rose said, remembering the flash of a timeline she'd gotten earlier. "He becomes the first Headless Monk."

"Exactly," River said. "It's so far into the future as to be almost not worth worrying about—they'll steal him out of time. The Doctor will rescue his head, of course, but by then it will be too late. They'll have advanced far enough that Jack's body will never be able to reform."

"And he'll evolve into the Face of Boe," Rose said, laughing a bit as she imagined her vain friend as a wrinkled, tentacled head. "He'll be older than the Doctor someday."

"Perhaps," River admitted. "But there will be others. Jack is capable of evolving so much, because of course, when anything lives that long, evolution is bound to take effect."

And Rose remembered something, from Satellite 5, from before she'd met Jack, and she started to laugh. "Oh my god," she managed to gasp. "He gets pregnant!"

River just smiled and sipped her tea, grimacing as she did. Rose picked up her own cup and took a sip, making a face as she tasted it.

"In five hundred years, River, I think you'd have learned by now to make a decent cup of tea," she grumbled as she picked up the pot and headed for the kitchen.

"Sweetie, I never told you how old I was," River called and Rose spun to look at her.

"How did I know that?" Rose asked, staring at her.

River grinned. "As painful as today was, for all of us, we've strengthened the timeline, just a bit. We've tightened the connection between this unwritten history and the history the Doctor wrote with you, and by doing so, we've brought the Doctor one step closer to returning. Your Time Sense is a bit stronger than it was before, and I haven't been shielding. You picked it up."

London mourned for Ianto Jones, but none more than the four UNIT agents who shared a flat inside HQ, who had relied on the Welshman for tea, for backup, for a shoulder to cry on in times of need. Ianto Jones had been the center upon which they all spun, and without him the entire team was threatening to fly off at any moment.

They barely had time to recover from his death before it was time to confront his murderer. Even River was not forgiving.

"I thought you said we had to preserve the timelines," Rose said, looking down at the smoking hole in the head of the Slitheen who had been masquerading as Margaret Blaine, wishing she could feel something other than pleasure that this creature, this thing, that had tried to kill her, tried to rip the TARDIS apart, and had killed Ianto, was dead.

"And so we should have," River said, shrugging as she tucked her gun back into its holster. "Sometimes, though, it's worthwhile to get a little bit of revenge."

Rose stared at the other woman, whose eyes were lit with a sort of disturbing enjoyment, and she wondered what it was River was seeing as she stared into the distance, through the Blaidd Drwg sign in front of them.

They cleaned up their 'mess' and Jack took them all down to his old Torchwood base, which was there, just—empty. "This is where I stood, listening to the Rift opening over my head, knowing that an actual mortal me was up there, with Rosie, Mickey, and the Doctor, and knowing I couldn't do anything to stop what was happening," he said, staring up at the ceiling.

His eyes seemed to catch on something, and he faced an office that appeared to be suspended from the ceiling. "That was my office," he said, pointing. "Ianto…" he turned, and River reached for him, allowing him to cry without saying a word.

"We should leave, Jack," Rose said, reaching for his hand, but he seemed to pull himself together and shook his head.

"I've already asked UNIT to take over this location," he said. "We'll all be moving here before the year is out. I don't think any of us could live in that flat for much longer, and I've had to live here without him before."

"We're not living at the Hub, Harkness," River said, swatting his shoulder. "I'll have a flat for the four of us by week's end. You can handle the movers," she told him, and Rose wondered if she saw herself as the mother of this rather odd family—her, Jack, Rose, and Mickey. A rather disloyal thought that perhaps she'd have liked River as a mum better than her own crossed her mind, but she pushed it away.

Life in Cardiff was—different—than life in London, at least for Rose. Jack seemed more relaxed, more at home, and she realised how much he'd really hated living in London all those years. Gwen Cooper joined their team, and with Tosh and Owen, they were almost like a family again.

There were a lot of days where life seemed to be in slow motion for their quasi-Torchwood team, made up of UNIT members who mostly didn't remember the Doctor, didn't remember the timeline they were doing their best to preserve, and Rose would remember her second Doctor telling her mother that trouble was just the bits in between; it had never really seemed that way as they stumbled between one catastrophe to another, but here, in Cardiff, it actually seemed true, and she wondered if this was how it was really supposed to be, and quashed down the disloyal thought almost immediately each time it sprung up.

River was spending more time in her proper timeline, only popping in when she was needed for something, or to comfort them when they had an exceptionally bad day. Jack, Gwen, Rose, and Mickey spent most of their time running various missions that kept the Earth safe, completely off the radar of the vast majority of the planet's inhabitants.

After the Krillitanes, which was surprisingly easy given what they already knew about the creatures and their vulnerability to their own oil, they were able to bring Donna Noble into their little team; it was a meeting Rose had been looking forward to for the past few years.

"Cardiff," the redhead said, looking around the underground Hub in distaste. "Almost as bad as Leeds."

"Actually, it's really rather worse," Jack said, giving his signature grin. Rose just rolled her eyes.

"Time and a place, Jack," she said.

"I was just -" he started, but she cut him off.

"Saying hello, I know," she waved him off. "I've heard it a thousand times before. I'm borrowing your office for this interview, yeah? Keep Owen away from her—I don't want to scare her off before she even decides if she wants to come work for us."

She led Donna further into the Hub, grinning as the older woman shrieked at the sight of pteradactyl flying overhead. "It's alright—completely harmless—well, mostly," she assured the other woman as she steered her towards Jack's office.

"What kind of place is this?" Donna asked, clearly shaken, as she dropped into a chair across from the cluttered desk.

"This, Miss Noble, is UNIT—United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. We're something of a special tasks branch, stationed here in Cardiff, and our goal is to preserve a timeline that has been erased from existence," Rose said watching the other woman's face for any flicker of recognition. "You are here because you played a crucial part in that unwritten timeline, several times over, in fact."

"Yeah, pull the other one, blondie," Donna said, bitterness creeping into her voice.

"Best temp in Chiswick, aren't you, Donna?" Rose asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the desk, smiling at this woman she remembered so vividly as a broken woman, screaming at the Universe regardless of how little difference she thought it would make, at such odds with her other memories of the Doctor-Donna, brilliant and aware of it, proud of herself and not afraid to show it—all of that potential was held inside the mind of this woman, who was staring at Rose as though she'd lost her mind.

"And what's that have to do with the price of tea in China?" Donna asked.

"You've heard of Ianto Jones, yeah?" Rose asked.

"Who hasn't? Whole country's heard of Ianto Jones—the man's a hero." Donna rolled her eyes.

"Ianto Jones was a member of our team," Rose said. "He was our—secretary, for lack of a better word. He helped us organise, made us tea—god could that man make tea—kept our spirits up, and eventually he started going into the field in places where the rest of us wouldn't fit in so well, like Downing Street as an intern."

"So—what, he was undercover for you lot when he died, is that what you're telling me? And you want me to replace him?" Donna's eyes got wide. "I ain't gonna die for no job, blondie!"

"We're not asking you to, Donna," Rose assured her. "Ianto should never have been in the field—he didn't have the training for it, and it was our fault for sending him. But we do need someone who can stay in the office. Someone to coordinate missions. Someone to make tea, because quite frankly, we're all rubbish at it. Even River's tea is—oh god, I didn't think anyone could burn tea, but she manages. Jack prefers coffee, dunno how you are with that. Point is, we need you, not just some secretary, because the day is coming, Donna, when that timeline that we're protecting comes back. And when it does, I can promise you that you'll want to be here, with us."

"But it's _Cardiff_," Donna said, and her inflection was almost a perfect imitation of Rose's first Doctor's, once upon a time, as they were trapped in a basement together, that Rose couldn't help but laugh.

"Yeah, it's not my favorite place in the world, either," she admitted. She continued to coax Donna along, focusing on the conversation with half her mind, the other half delving into the other woman's, attempting to find any traces of the song.

Her stomach clenched; in the very back of Donna's mind she found what she was looking for—a sickly, sour yellow web of the song, holding back—oh, gods—it was holding back so much. All that was, all that is, all that ever could be. Donna could have been so much and it was all held back by a sour yellow song in her head that she couldn't even hear.

"S'wrong," Rose muttered, not really aware that she was speaking aloud. "Need River, need Jack—god, I might even need the TARDIS to sort this out."

"Sorry, what?" Donna said, her head snapping up, and for a second, Rose could have sworn she saw recognition in them.

"Sorry, just—you're hired, of course, if you want the job," Rose said, brushing away the traces of the web. "You'll have to meet River and Jack—they'll give the final okay, but I know they will. I was just—remembering a project that I need to consult with both of them on."

"Don't think you can fool me with that, Blondie," Donna said, rolling her eyes. "Been lied to by better than you, haven't I?" Rose looked at Donna carefully, making sure that the other woman understood what she was saying, but the redhead continued on blithely unaware. "Talk for days, that one could, never saying anything at all. God, you're just like him. By all means, I'll come to work here. Better than temping, anyway, even if it is in bloody _Cardiff_."

And Rose understood; Donna's disdain for Cardiff was _his _disdain for Cardiff, leaking through, spilling over. The web, the wrongness of it—without the TARDIS, without the Doctor, the web was weakening, and bits were leaking through. If she didn't find a way to shore it up, or better, find a way to let the Doctor-Donna exist in full, Donna would burn long before the Doctor returned in 2010.

As she bustled Donna out, giving her a start date for her new job, offering her a place in their rapidly-filling flat (really, they were going to have to get a proper mortgage on a proper house soon, the lot of them, and part of her simply rebelled at that thought, or they were going to have to split up, and she didn't know if she could bear that either), she ran different scenarios over in her head of how she could possibly save Donna with only herself, River Song, and Jack Harkness at her disposal.


End file.
